KERN-L Archives

From: "jrs" <>
Subject: [KERN-L] Word of the Week
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 17:42:16 -0500

OK, OK I'll quit lurking! lol
My story: When I got my puter & got on the Internet, I started tracing my
roots. My father's real name, or so I thought, was Arthur Kerns from West
Virginia. So I started looking for Kerns in WV. Then I told my mother what
I was doing & she informed me that my grandmother, in all of her all knowing
wisdom, didn't like the way grandfather's family spelled their name, so she
changed the spelling to Kerns. My father was dead, all of his brothers &
sisters were dead & no one else could remember how the name was originally
spelled!

I only knew my grandmother's first name, not her maiden name. But I had a
letter written by an aunt to another aunt that gave a lot of info about
people named Sutphin. Now I wasn't even sure how the 1st aunt was related to
me, if she was an aunt or maybe a cousin. So I started searching the
Internet for Sutphin & found a mailing list for that name & posted what
little info I had & they were able to help me, my grandmother's maiden name
was Sutphin.

The Kerns part was harder, because no one tracing the Sutphins knew very
much about my particular little branch of the family tree. So I went to the
WV genealogy web pages & to the counties I know the family had lived in. I
know my grandfathers name was Benjamin Franklin & he had a brother named
Christopher Columbus. Someone taking care of one of the WV counties
recognized these names & sent me copies of their history from a book. With
this new info I was able to go to Family Tree Maker's web pages & get lots
more info.
I have found it spelled several different ways; Cearnes Cernes, etc. I have
also been in contact with some "new" cousins & traded info with them.

That's my story & I'm sticking with it!

Martha Reynolds

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• [KERN-L] Word of the Week by "jrs" <>